“On the beach, down by the wall. She’s like, she thinks…Look, talk to her, okay? Just don’t tell her I told you. Okay?”
“Is she down there now? It’s, like, two a.m.”
“That’s when they do it. They don’t want Zil or…or you, I guess, giving them a hard time. You know where the wall runs down from Clifftop to the beach? Those rocks out there? That’s where she is. Not alone. Other kids are there, too.”
Sam felt an unwelcome tingle running up his spine. He’d developed a pretty good instinct for trouble over the last few months. This felt like trouble.
“Okay, I’ll check it out.”
“Yah. Cool.”
“’Night, Sinder. Take care.”
He left her and continued walking, wondering what new craziness or danger lay ahead. He climbed the road up past Clifftop. Glanced up at Lana’s balcony.
Patrick, Lana’s Labrador, must have heard him because he gave a short, sharp warning bark.
“Just me, Patrick,” Sam said.
There were very few dogs or cats still alive in the FAYZ. The only reason Patrick had not ended up as dog stew was because he belonged to the Healer.
From the top of the cliff Sam looked down and thought he could make out several people on the rocks, right down in the surf that wasn’t quite surf. They were big rocks, dangerous back in the days when Sam would take his board out there with Quinn and wait for a big one.
Sam didn’t need light to scale down the cliff. He could have done it blind. In the old days he’d done it hauling all his gear.
As he reached the sand, he heard soft voices. One speaking. One crying.
The FAYZ wall, the impenetrable, impermeable, eye-baffling barrier that defined the boundaries of the FAYZ, glowed almost imperceptibly. Not even a glow, really, a suggestion of translucence. Gray and blank.
A small bonfire burned on the beach, casting a faint orange light over a small circle of sand and rock and water.
No one noticed Sam as he approached. So he had time to identify most of the half-dozen kids out there. Francis, Cigar, D-Con, a few others, and Orsay herself.
“I have seen something…,” Orsay began.
“Tell me about my mom,” someone cried out.
Orsay held up her hand, a calming gesture. “Please. I will do my best to reach your loved ones.”
“She’s not a cell phone,” the dark girl beside Orsay snapped. “It is very painful for the Prophetess to make contact with the barrier. Give her some peace. And listen to her words.”
Sam squinted, not quite able to recognize the dark-haired girl in the flickering firelight. Some friend of Orsay’s? Sam thought he knew every kid in the FAYZ.
“Begin again, Prophetess,” the dark-haired girl said.
“Thank you, Nerezza,” Orsay said.
Sam shook his head in amazement. Not only had he not known that Orsay was doing this, he hadn’t known she’d acquired her own personal manager. Not someone he recognized, the girl called Nerezza.
“I have seen something…,” Orsay began again, and faltered as though expecting to be interrupted. “A vision.”
That caused a murmur. Or maybe it was just the sighing sound of the water on the sand.
“In my vision I saw all of the children of the FAYZ, older kids, younger, too. I saw them standing atop the cliff.”
Every head swiveled to look up at the cliff. Sam ducked, then felt foolish: the darkness concealed him.
“The kids of the FAYZ, prisoners of the FAYZ, gazed out into a setting sun. Such a beautiful sunset. Redder and more vivid than anything you’ve ever seen.” She seemed to be mesmerized by that vision. “Such a red sunset.”